Chickpea is an annual, self-pollinated diploid crop species with a genome size of ~ 740 Mb. Globally, chickpea is the third most important food legume. Because of the high protein content of the seeds, chickpea is considered a stable protein source for the human diet. As a legume, chickpea contributes to the sustainable improvement of the environment when grown in agricultural rotations due to its ability to fix nitrogen.
Chickpea underwent domestication (the transition from wild to crop species) as part of the evolution of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent 12,000 to 10,000 years ago. Following domestication, chickpea cultivation expanded to wider latitudinal and climatic range with shorter growing seasons where the plant life cycle can be completed before the end of summer, permitting the escape from end-of-season stresses that constrain stable production. However, domestication and artificial selection resulted in a very narrow genetic diversity of modern cultivated chickpea germplasm, and breeding programs are challenged by this evolutionary bottleneck.
Flowering time involves the transition from vegetative growth to the flowering state and it refers to the number of days from sowing to the appearance of the first fully opened flower. Flowering time is the major domestication trait defining the adaptation of chickpea to different agro-climatic conditions, and therefore is a major determinant of its productivity.
Despite early flowering time being suggested as a means to increase chickpea adaptability roughly 45 years ago , studies on the genetic control of flowering time have appeared only within the 21st century. Although classical genetic analyses have provided a wealth of valuable information, the molecular identities of genes underlying the major flowering time locus remains mostly elusive.
Understanding and learning the allelic variation of the complex gene network controlling flowering time will allow us to obtain molecular tags for early/late flowering tags that may ultimately be used in the breeding programs to develop adapted cultivars to their specific environments. This could be exploited by programs of international institutions (ICARDA, ICRISAT, INRAT) and private companies. This Marie Skłodowska Curie Action (MSCA) emphasizes the use of modern methodologies in genomics and bioinformatics, together with plant breeding. This MSCA links to the Horizon 2020 Programme of the EU under the specific challenge Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry research (Work Programme 2018-2020), specifically through the innovations in plant variety testing section: “identify crop characteristics with the capacity ... to maintain yield under more variable conditions and under more sustainable crop management practices”.
Formal objectives of this Marie Skłodowska Curie Action (MSCA) have been to (a) identify the molecular basis underlying the genomic regions responsible for the genetic control of flowering time in chickpea; (b) develop molecular markers for early/late flowering
